This link worked today, but here's the article:
Report details bug-infested distress of Colorado forests
By Jim Erickson, Rocky Mountain News
February 7, 2007
The largest pine beetle epidemic in state history is devouring Colorado's scenic beauty, clobbering mountain-town economies and fueling the wildfire threat, forestry officials conclude in a report to be released today.
The state's high-elevation lodgepole pine forests suffered the heaviest losses in 2006.
Some 643,000 acres of lodgepole forest - about 42 percent of Colorado's total - were infested last year by mountain pine beetles, said Jen Chase, lead author of the 2006 Report on the Health of Colorado's Forests.
But the damage went beyond lodgepoles. Ponderosa pines also suffered from mountain pine beetles in 2006, along with:
• 138,000 acres of aspens declining from a mysterious affliction.
• 68,000 acres of spruce infested with bark beetles.
• 372,000 acres of subalpine fir attacked by Western balsam bark beetles, root diseases and other unknown factors.
• 19,000 acres of piñon pines infested with ips beetles.
• 93,000 acres of Douglas fir, true fir and spruce hit by Western spruce budworm.
"A lot of these outbreaks got kicked off because of the drought, but forest conditions have allowed them to keep expanding," said U.S. Forest Service entomologist Bob Cain.
"We have pretty uniform conditions of older, denser forests across the state, which are susceptible to the bark beetles," he said. "So even though the drought conditions have improved, the outbreaks are continuing."
And there's no end in sight.
The annual forest health reports are written by the Colorado State Forest Service. Officials from that agency and the U.S. Forest Service will brief state legislators this morning.
In addition to providing a sobering mortality update, the report calls on lawmakers and mountain communities to work with federal and state foresters to mitigate damages from the current epidemic and to help shape Colorado's "next forest."
"We can't stop this epidemic, but we can provide management actions to help reduce the effects on people," said Bob Vaught, director of renewable resources for the Rocky Mountain region of the U.S. Forest Service.
Last year in northern Colorado, the U.S. Forest Service worked with county and municipal governments to treat more than 35,000 acres in bug-infested areas, Vaught said.
The treatments included tree spraying, removal of infested trees, and prescribed fires.
Since 2002, the Forest Service has spent about $25 million a year to renew forest health in Colorado, with much of that money targeted to insect-plagued forests, said agency spokesman Jim Maxwell.
"The forest will come back over time, and we need to decide now what kind of forest we want to see in the future," Vaught said. "There are many things we can do to help bring back a forest that will be both healthy and diverse."
Colorado's north-central mountains have been ground zero for the pine beetle epidemic, which started in the mid-1990s. But overcrowded Front Range forests are in the early stages of a slower-growing outbreak, Chase said.
